Don’t be fooled by images of snow-capped mountain tops and sparkling freshwater streams… Bottled water is hazardous to your health!

Scientists at the Environmental Working Group (EWG) recently conducted a bottled water quality investigation and found a frightening number of chemical contaminants in every major brand of bottled water that they analyzed.

Among 10 popular brands of bottled water, researchers found a total of 38 chemical pollutants, with an average of 8 contaminants in a single brand. Contaminants included pharmaceutical pollution (such as pain medication), heavy metals, arsenic, radioactive isotopes, fertilizer residue, bacteria, and a wide range of industrial chemicals. In most cases, you’d be better off drinking regular tap water!

Indeed, public water utilities must notify their customers of any contaminants in tap water, but bottled water companies are not bound by the same regulations. Bottled water companies do not have to reveal contaminants, the source of their water, or how it is treated. In fact, the EWG found that some brands of bottled water consist of nothing more than fluoride-containing tap water; however, because it comes in a plastic bottle, this tap water costs approximately 2,000 times more than regular tap water!

Following the standard scientific practice for market-based studies, the EWG kept the identities of most bottled water brands anonymous; however, they revealed two brands that contained contaminants at levels which exceeded state standards or industry guidelines:

• Walmart’s “Sam’s Choice” bottled water contained high levels of bromodichloromethane and trihalomethanes, chemicals which are linked to cancer. Under California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, the EWG is filing suit against Walmart in an effort to force the retail giant to post the following warning on bottles: “WARNING: This product contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer.”
• These same cancer-causing chemicals were found in high levels in Giant Supermarket’s “Acadia” brand of bottled water.

In a parallel study conduced at the University of Missouri, one brand of bottled water caused a 78% increase in the growth of breast cancer cells compared to the control sample. In other words, chemical contamination in bottled water not only causes cancer, but it can also cause cancerous tumors to grow much faster.

A plastic bottle is not a suitable container for drinking water! Chemicals in the plastic can mimic hormones, disrupt the endocrine system, and promote cancer as well as other serious health problems.

If you are health-conscious individual – if you want to avoid poisoning your body – then put down that bottle of water! The only reliable way to obtain pure, healthy water is to use a home water filter. As the EWG recommends, “consumers should drink filtered tap water instead of bottled water.”

According to the EWG, Americans pay an average of two-tenths of a cent per gallon to drink water from the tap. The average drinking water filter costs only $0.31 per gallon – that’s 12 times lower than the typical cost of bottled water!

Whole-house water filters also offer substantial savings compared to bottled water. Plus, whole-house water filters remove chemicals not only from drinking water but also from water used in the shower, clothes washer, dishwasher, and other appliances. For the average household, the cost of a whole-house water filtration system is about a quarter per day – while a single gallon of bottled water is 15 times more expensive!

The EWG concludes, “Our tests strongly indicate that the purity of bottled water cannot be trusted. Given the industry’s refusal to make available data to support their claims of superiority, consumer confidence in the purity of bottled water is simply not justified.”

On top of that, the bottled water industry in the U.S. alone uses 1.5 million barrels of oil annually; that’s enough energy to power 250,000 homes for an entire year!

The only safe kind of bottled water is the kind that comes in non-toxic glass water bottles that you fill up using a home water filter.